


love is the death of duty

by leov66



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Espionage, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Minor Character Death, Psychological Trauma, Trans Male Character, World War II, grantaire eponine and gavroche are siblings, mentions of shell shock, references to les miserables the book, she/her pronouns for enjolras until the last few sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12431316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leov66/pseuds/leov66
Summary: Her blind idealism strikes him as something out of a story of an uprising led by a sunlike warrior, not a helpless war they’ve already been stuck in for far too long. Yet her unwavering dedication to the cause is what binds the two of them together, even if it’s only for the sake of the mission.jamesturns20 entry 3,trans enjthis time. world war 2 au.EDIT 11/11/2017: I CANT BELIEVE!!! THIS WORK ACTUALLY WON THE CONTEST IN THE ANGST CATEGORY!!!i feel so honoured honestly????





	love is the death of duty

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr's [@euphra-sie](https://euphra-sie.tumblr.com)
> 
> if anybody feels like crying to that ww2 mood id suggest [vera lynn's we'll meet again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcunREYzNY) which is an all-time banger or anything by marlene dietrich

Casablanca seems like the perfect place to be. All stunning houses, beaming lights, beautiful people and the sense of purpose he finds there are like in no other city he’s known. Everything is perfect, save for the fact that he’s on a mission, surrounded by Germans and painfully in love. 

 

Enjolras flirts with the tired officers with an ease that makes Grantaire want to punch them all. Those fools never stood a chance and neither did he, he realizes, unable to take his eyes off her when she speaks with that perfect Parisian accent:

 

“C’est mon époux,” _that’s my husband_. He kisses her cheek and holds her hand for the rest of the evening.

 

“I believe we haven’t properly been introduced yet,” she tells him in the smoke-soaked taxi on the way to the little house they’re supposed to share for the sake of the mission. “Julianne Enjolras, it’s a pleasure.”

 

“René Grantaire, likewise.” He smiles at her and tries not to think about the way her name would roll off his tongue, if he said it like a prayer. _Enjolras, Enjolras, Enjolras._ Somehow, it’s a ghost of a memory.

 

“Your accent…Parisian, isn’t it? _How well do you speak English?_ ”

 

“ _Graduated at Oxford, no worries._ ”

 

“An intellectual, then…They really sent the best we’ve got for these dumb pigs,” she mutters under her nose and Grantaire is so far gone he doesn’t even nod along, too caught up in the way she smirked - like a predator that’s ready to fuck its prey up.

 

“ _She’s got a temper, mate, better watch out_ ,” someone at the agency back in London told him, and during those humid days he learns spontaneously why she’s the best (and one of the few) women in their ranks and how utterly frustrating she can be at certain times. Her blind idealism strikes him as something out of a story of an uprising led by a sunlike warrior, not a helpless war they’ve already been stuck in for far too long. Yet her unwavering dedication to the cause is what binds the two of them together, even if it’s only for the sake of the mission.

 

“We’re a married couple, after all,” she tell shim one night when they’re smoking on a rooftop, trying to escape the heat of the night, “we should know each other more, in order to appear more convincing.”

 

So they talk about themselves, their pasts, families, universities they attended, anything but the war, everything it had taken away from them. He hears about her parents, executed by Germans a few days after she had left Paris, her days at the Sorbone, professor Lamarque who introduced her to espionage, her childhood friends Combeferre and Courfeyrac, both executed, _but at least they died together_ ; and in return he tells her about his own family, about Eponine who died somewhere out on the Parisian streets, selling her body, with no dignity left, about Gavroche who was such a little child when he was born that their mother doubted he’d live, Gavroche who he’d left on the front steps of the Notre Dame because they had no other choice, about his father’s shell shock after the hell of Verdun (the mere name brings so many memories back, ones he’s spent all his childhood forgetting, but she holds his hand and laces their fingers together and so he swallows and goes on), about Joly who stepped on a mine and lost his leg, about Bossuet who barely dodged a bullet and lost an eye instead, about Musichetta who tried to fix them both.

 

Then he runs out of stories to tell and so does she. The nightsky shines like it always does; yet its light feels warmer just for the two of them, and when he leans in to kiss her, what they pretend to have seems real for those few seconds.

 

Days turn into weeks and they fall into a routine Grantaire is too comfortable with. Some of the kisses they share feel like home, like something they could’ve had. On those mornings full of cigarette smoke and cheap coffee, he truly falls in love with her, it makes his heart soar and his chest tighten because he knows it’s all a game. Yet it’s easy to pretend her smiles and caresses are truly meant for him.

 

They argue about literature, music and coffee. She laughs at his ’pretentious’ taste, he mocks her ’fake social progressiveness’ and somehow they’re polar opossites when it comes to every single thing, except for maybe political views (as in, _fuck Hitler_ ). All the women and men he used to love, and there have been many, don’t even matter to him anymore, for all he sees is Enjolras, forever and always. She’s burnt into his memory, like a wound that’s almost pleasing upon reopening, and he lives in that pain of letting her into his heart. It’s like the dream he once had, someone who’s _right_ for him, who understands him, lets him be who he truly is, not just another nameless body for a single night, something to live in for a while and then forget; no, she’s something he can hold onto, despite everything. 

 

Five months into the mission, they start sleeping in the same bed and he almost manages to get through an entire night for the first time in years. Nothing else happens, she never allows it and he never presses. The touches in the dark are enough to soothe his body, the tender kisses try to heal his soul. Her golden hair glistens in the dark and he closes his eyes, far away from the world that broke him. 

 

He sees her struggle, too, sees the lines on her forehead that the stress has pressed itself into, learns from the way she talks how tired she is, feels her tense up when he mentions something he shouldn’t have, hears her cry on some nights. Now and then, she stays up for days until she collapses, catching up on reports, listening to the radio, doing anything but talking to him, or doesn’t eat at all. He doesn’t understand her, in those days, but he tries.

 

It feels like they’ve got everything under absolute control. The Germans (Michael, Hans, Georg, he knows everything about them but doesn’t think about it, because they might just be single pawns but they play the game nevertheless) don’t suspect anything, their positions in society seem to be stable and their supervisors are satisfied with the amount of information. Then, just like this, they get a frantic message to _leave_ , be as quick as they can, to split up as soon as possible, to avoid any contact with the agency. _Something went wrong, someone knows,_ their emergency contact wrote. He’s terrified, and so is she, he knows by the strength that she holds his hand with that if he said anything, she’d just break right there, for all the sacrifices she had to make for this mission. The silence stretches itself out between them like an unwanted guest, made itself at home as if they were nothing but strangers again, only with a vague sense of recognition.

 

“Back at Casablanca,” she tells him on the airplane back to London, “I wanted to tell you something. Something about me.”

 

“Don’t say it. We’ll see each other again, I promise. When it’s all over.”

 

“You don’t even know when the war will end, no one does.”

 

He doesn’t care, and kisses her to _remember,_ to know the faintest of her touches even in death. She clings to him for his warmth, or perhaps for something he doesn’t yet understand, for there is still a part of her he never knew at all. All the questions he has are like a promise, a sign of so much more that is yet to come for the two of them.

 

Before he’s gone to one side and she to another, she whispers a few words into his ears that are meant for no one but him, an adress, a place they might call home one day. He lives for Enjolras, from that day on, with the hope for a life that starts when tomorrow comes.

 

In 1944, he feels like giving up. He’s tired of this, the bombings, the fear, the life he’s forced to lead. Every Monday and Friday, he teaches Latin at what used to be a theatre but now remains one of the few places where the people of the little town he’s been placed in try to live. He still has the adress written down somewhere, so he knows that all of this was real, that _Enjolras_ was real.

 

Some days, he almost wishes they’d never met, so he wouldn’t live like that, but somehow he knows he was born to be one of the miserable ones.

 

He works at a hospital, too, meets young men around Gavroche’s age and _weeps_ , talks to women Eponine could’ve been like and breaks all over again. Older soldiers, ones resembling his father but even more fucked up in the heads, sit and stare at him like he’s their son, every single one, and he watches them cry like children when he and the nurses show them kindness and patience.

 

Month after month, he puts himself together by fixing others, helping them understand themselves more, hoping he’d be saved in the process. Casablanca feels like a wild dream, the heat, the parties, the life they’d led, but he lets it take him in its arms some nights, when the bottle no longer protects him from the world. 

 

Then, the bombs come and almost everyone he’s known is dead, _again._ It’s the final straw and it takes all the money he’s saved up but he doesn’t care, he needs to leave this godforsaken country forever before he loses himself. He’s got no family left, no future, all he knows is a name and an adress. So he leaves England, travels through the Netherlands, through France, and doesn’t say a word. Speaking doesn’t soothe him anymore, so he remains silent through the entire thing. Sometimes, he stays at a village for a few weeks, never for too long, and then carries on with the journey.

 

Arriving at a train station in Geneva should feel better than this, he realizes, but he just stands up, nods at the old lady reading a book in the corner of the compartment and leaves the train. The adress echoes in his mind, louder than ever, and it feels like the last real thing. If he’d looked in the mirror, he wouldn’t even recognize himself anymore, but he’s long since stopped caring about anything. 

 

The year’s 1946, the world is trying to fix everything and he’s broken all over again. He lives at a shelter for a while, then gets a loan from the first bank he sees on his walk around the city and moves into a little apartment on the outskirts. Eventually, he opens up and starts speaking, finally putting the German he learnt almost ten years ago to use and the French that feels a tad too bitter for comfort on his tongue, and tries to live. The winters are beautiful in Switzerland, his old neighbour tells him one November afternoon after he helps her water her plants, and he begins to appreciate it.

 

One day, he finds enough strength within himself to go to the place Enjolras had whispered to him what feels like a lifetime ago. It’s a considerably big house, with pretty ornaments and a little garden. For a split second, he can almost see a flash of gold behind the clean windows, but maybe it’s just his roughed up heart’s dream. He doesn’t walk by it for some time afterwards, maybe because tempting fate has never been the best idea.

 

In 1948, he’s got a decent job as a translator, his neighbours help him cook dinner sometimes, and he almost calls Geneva home. 

 

Then, everything falls apart when he crashes into a particular someone at the main square. He’d recognize that faint smell of lavender anywhere, and when he looks up to meet those blue eyes, he knows it’s Enjolras. Just like this, they meet again, and this time, Grantaire’s never letting go.

 

Enjolras looks different now, with her hair cropped as short as possible, in men’s clothing, but it doesn’t matter at all when their hands fit together like they only parted for a few seconds. He holds her like she’s all he’s ever had, and in return she puts her head on his shoulders and they can pretend it’s Casablanca again.

 

“It’s you, it’s really you,” she whispers against his neck. He can’t manage a single word, only breathes her in and prays he’s not dreaming.

 

They sit in the park and while the world goes on around them, they’ve gone back in time, to the days when they at least pretended to be happy. Grantaire learns how little he knew about Enjolras, and Enjolras is forced to see what’s truly become of him.

 

“It’s always been there, somehow, that this is not…not who I am,” Enjolras says shakily, as if afraid that there was a thing that could possibly scare Grantaire away.

 

“This is how I have felt, this is who I am. A man, not a woman.”

 

Grantaire nods his head and there’s really not much he can do except for that.  “Doesn’t matter at all. I’ll always love you anyway,” he blurs out before he can even think.

 

That seems to have startled Enjolras enough to go silent for a while.

 

“You…really love me?”, he asks.

 

“Always have,” Grantaire dares to smile. “Do you permit it?”

 

Enjolras shakes his head with a smile.

 

And so, the world comes full circle. 

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by the 2016 movie _allied_ , felt like referencing the brick at least 5 times. also an open ending yee
> 
>  oh also title from the song of ice and fire. 'love is the death of duty. what is honour compared to a woman's love?' 
> 
> **COMMENTS AND KUDOS**


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